Week Six Part Twelve: The Castle

Corbin Todd: 46 years old. Aspiration: Romance. LTW: Become Hall of Famer (fulfilled: Become Professional Party Guest). Astrological sign: Libra.
Audrey King: 39 years old. Aspiration: Fortune. LTW: Become Criminal Mastermind. Astrological sign: Scorpio.
Charles King: 3 years old. Astrological sign: ?

Note: I realized as I was writing this post that Charles King should actually be two calendar years younger than his half-brother Charles Riedmayer, not one. I like the storyline potential of them being closer together in age, so I'm pretending that the previous update spanned 6 years (from 2039 to 2045) and this one spans 8 years (from 2045 to 2053). This magic math doesn't affect gameplay at all (Charles and his younger sibling would be in the same college batches regardless of whether they were born in '42 and '45 or '43 and '46); it's just storyline. 

Corbin and Audrey are both townies, but Corbin had 4 children with a playable before he ran away with Audrey, so he's irrevocably part of the timestream now. Edith and her children were played already this round, in Part 7.

"Peter Pan"
narrated by Audrey King

I'm surprised you want to hear from me, the "other woman" in the story started by that silly Riedmayer woman. But here I am, so I guess I'll say my piece.

My first son, Charles, was what you might call an "accident". That didn't please me, let me tell you. But I thought, "Well, I'm not getting any younger, and I have to leave my money to somebody." So I made an arrangement with Corbin, and next thing I knew we're practically domestic, with two sons.

Yes, two. William was born on Charles' third birthday. I would have preferred a girl, but both boys are ridiculously good-natured, and a girl probably would have been even more of a diva than me--I mean, really, with Corbin as a father?--so I suppose I got lucky.

William wasn't an accident, because Charles was constantly asking for someone to play with him, and I figure that since I already had a kid demanding attention 24/7 there wasn't much danger in having another. And it turned out that they actually did keep each other entertained, so that's a relief.

Corbin and I have a pretty good thing going. He's actually really easy to manage, if you know how to do it. I mean, the only real trick is that you can't expect him to be faithful. I don't care one way or the other, as long as he does his bit with the rugrats.

Funny thing is, he actually does. Maybe it's just 'cause there's two instead of the FOUR that crazy other woman had, or maybe I just know how to keep him in line better, but he's managed to keep the boys alive so far.

I'm not one to gush over the baby years--or much of anything, really--so let's just skip ahead a ways. Mercifully soon, the boys were both old enough to go to school--Charles was 8, and William was 5.

I decided it was high time to call up the headmaster of the private school...Corbin's other kids had gotten in the year before, and I wasn't about to be outdone.

The ridiculous thing is that Corbin got it in his head that he wanted to invite his other sons over the very same day of our interview with the headmaster. (His daughter was at college, and anyway she doesn't speak to him.) Still, the middle one--Fritz--managed to sit down and have an intelligent conversation about literature with the headmaster and I, while Corbin was being stupid and trying to discuss video games with another one of the boys.

That didn't go so well. Shockingly, not every young boy likes video games. Kind of like how I'm a woman but don't like pink and fluffy kittens? You'd think Corbin would get that, but then again he doesn't really understand women either, even though he likes them so much.

Afterward we were relaxing in the hot tub, and Corbin was saying how surprised he was that the other kids seemed so grown-up already. I guess part of it is that he hadn't seen them since they were toddlers, but the other part could very well be that he's never grown up himself, so he can't imagine that anyone else does.

The Todd/King family got a gypsy lamp sometime this week, so they were able to make their downstairs a lot fancier. 

The upstairs got fancier too. 

And here's the whole house. They definitely need to buy some windows with their next bit of spare cash.

Notes:

1. William is a clone of Charles. Boo. At least they're cute. Corbin is pretty good at fathering cute kids, even if he is pretty lousy at raising them.

2. Both boys have 10 outgoing points and as a result their social motive is constantly plummeting. I actually got social worker warnings two or three times. Audrey wasn't kidding when she said they want attention constantly.

3. Corbin rolled a secondary aspiration of Family partway through the round, which is why I had him invite over his sons. He'd never even met Charles R. As you can see, their first conversation ever didn't go too swimmingly. Charles really does hate video games.